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Alumni newsletter - The year in review

A year with retired partner, George Renwick

"Since I retired from the Firm in 1996 I have divided my time between London and a small village in Somerset where we have a house. From 1996 to 2014 I was Chairman of the Railway Industry Dispute Resolution Committee, a committee of railwaymen set up to provide a forum for resolving disputes between companies in the newly privatised railway industry. By the time I retired from that, after 18 very enjoyable years, the number of disputes coming to the Committee had dwindled to a trickle (when I mentioned this to someone from Network Rail, he said "That's because you have taught us to settle our disputes among ourselves", which was nice to hear) and I had worked myself out of a job.

In the past year my main activities, apart from two holidays in Italy, have been in Somerset, chairing our PCC, serving on a diocesan committee and, as a lay reader, helping our vicar by taking services twice a month in one or more of the ten village churches for which he is responsible, and occasional funerals when asked to do so by the families concerned."

A review from Miles McCarthy, Head of Legal - Commercial at Associated British Foods plc

"The team won the Retail Legal Team of the Year at this year's The Lawyer awards for our work on launching Primark in the US. We also launched in Italy this year.

Our key challenges for the coming year will not surprise: Brexit and GDPR are top of the list, but so is looking for ways to be more agile and exploit new technologies and ways of working."

One year on...with Jenny Buckley, Legal Adviser at Sky

"Sky’s launch of the innovative Sky Q was a real highlight of 2016. Sky Q is the next generation home entertainment system with lots of innovative features giving a richer viewing experience and seamless TV viewing around and outside the home. For example, it includes the ability to pause viewing on one TV screen and pick up in another room, as well as saving recordings onto a tablet to watch anywhere.

Within Sky Legal this involved extensive cross-department collaboration and we were was tasked with facilitating the delivery of core requirements across the Sky Q project. As a member of the Content and Commercial Legal Team, we ensured appropriate arrangements were in place with all Sky’s content providers ahead of launch, including the expansion of high quality acquired content in all formats, including Ultra HD.

However, 2016 has not been all work and no play. In the summer we rallied around Team Sky during the Tour de France. The Content and Commercial Legal Team did a charity fundraiser in which we peddled the distance of the Tour de France in a series of hip hop spin classes run by Sky’s Health & Fitness Team, which was great fun. I’ve also really enjoyed watching Westworld and Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic, which both come from our long-term partnership with HBO."